God Who Hears and Loves
June 18, 2015
We have a big God. I have been reading through Psalms in my devotional time this month. Psalms is filled with prayers, poems and songs that declare the greatness of our God... most of the time contrasting it with the smallness and pettiness of our lives. In that contrast, God is always seen as right, and we are generally in the wrong. He is always seen as perfect and we are contrasted as less than perfect. The psalms are study a in grace and love. (Even though David did whine a bit in a few about the people who hated him. Just another contrast in how human we can sometimes be.)
This was a section that I marked off in Psalm 103. Read it out loud:
“The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. 9He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; 10he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. 11For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; 12as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. 13As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; 14for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” Psalm 103:8-14
For as high as the heavens are above the earth… that is the size of His love for us. That distance is staggering. When David wrote these words, he did not know what we know now. They did not view the stars as other suns. They could not fathom how far away those tiny pin pricks of light actually are. Our universe is staggering in size. The nearest star is Alpha Centauri. It is 4.24 light years away from earth. There is nearly 6 billion miles in a light year. (5.87 billion to be more exact). That puts our nearest neighbor in space at 25 billion miles away. It takes the light from that star over four years to reach us.
Sound travels much slower. Sound can travel at about 1 mile per 4.7 seconds. While light from Alpha Centauri takes 52 months to get here. A sound would take 37,000 years to get here. (And for you space purists, I realize that sound does not travel in a vacuum.)
Our universe is staggering in size. It is so large that there are stars out there whose light has not yet reached our planet. God flung them out there so far from us that the light from them cannot catch us yet. We technically are seeing more stars in the sky than David did in his day some 3500 years ago. And we still have not seen them all yet.
So when David writes that God’s loves is as high as the heavens are above the earth—we know... that is one great big hunk of love.
And amazingly, this love compels Him to hear everything that we ask. While God may be that much greater that we are and we are infintessibly small in comparison to Him, He still chooses to shine His favor and love on us. AMAZING.
A few years ago, the Dr. Suess book “Horton Hears a Who” was turned into a movie. If you saw the movie or remember the book, you will remember that Horton is an elephant who by the incredible ability of his huge ears can hear what others cannot. One day he discovers that there is an entire world of beings actually living on a dust speck. His acute hearing one day discovers the noise of their world. Now his friends think he is absolutely crazy to think that there could be something alive, let alone a world of beings, on this dust speck. In the end, they cannot comprehend the shift in size between their universes. They try to cure Horton of his “delusion” by destroying the dust speck (Boil that dust speck; boil that dust speck... my favorite song in the movie.) And yet Horton is wiling to sacrifice his life to save this tiny world. There is a world of beings on this dust speck.
Conversely. In the size of the universe, the earth is less that a dust speck in the arid planes of Texas. And yet David knows that God’s love is large enough for us. Listen to some of his other words:
“The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.” Psalm 34:17
“The LORD hears the needy and does not despise his captive people.” Psalm 69:33
Regardless of the size of the universe. Regardless of our relative smallness in the midst of it. Regardless of the whether we say something out loud or form the words in our heads... God hears us. God loves us. God knows us. God chooses out of all the possible dust speck in the universe – He chooses me. He chooses you.
So, this summer, as you are out and about in the evening, maybe enjoying a time around a campfire. Or you are just out for a walk on a starry night. Look up. While the universe is displayed in front of you, imagine a God large enough to fill the sky with His grin and devoted enough to hear you when you say "Wow.”
A God this big deserves our attention. He deserves our love. He deserves our devotion. Every day. Every week. With every life.
We have a God who loves and hears.
Andy